As a longtime member of the Arts & Faith community, I’m pleased to report that this week Arts & Faith and Image Journal released the 2011 edition of the Arts & Faith Top 100 Films list—possibly the best edition of the list to date, and in many ways an improvement on last year’s list.
Several weeks ago (but only five updates back) ago I mentioned I would be scarce through all of January, and for most of last month I hoped that life would return to normal by Groundhog Day or so. Alas, my January crunch overran most of February.
2010 was a good year for Decent Films, though there’s room for improvement in 2011.
Major props to Dr. David C. Downing, whose essay on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Ignatius Insight) closes with this brilliant line:
Tune in Friday, December 17 for an hour of Decent Films radio on Catholic Answers Live with Patrick Coffin … Also, don’t miss episode 4 of our special Christmas mini-season of “Reel Faith” this Sunday at 7pm EST.
I seem to be on a comparison kick: A while back I did a massive comparison/contrast between Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and The Empire Strikes Back. Then I followed up with a comparison/contrast of Fantasia and Fantasia 2000.
Tune in Sunday, December 12 at 7pm EST for another episode of “Reel Faith.” Reviewed this week: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Love and Other Drugs and The King’s Speech, plus Fantasia and NET Pcik of the Week. Watch online!
A belated announcement that “Reel Faith” is back for 5 weeks only, starting last Sunday. Now airing on Sundays at 7pm, the mini-season runs through December 26.
Arts & Faith veteran “mrmando” skewers Ron Howard’s version of the Dan Brown potboiler with a brilliant angle I hadn’t thought of.
Blaise Pascal was a great critic of Jesuit casuistry, and coined the pejorative adjective “Jesuitical,” meaning “crafty; practicing equivocation or overly subtle rationalization.” That may not have been fair to the Jesuits of Pascal’s day, but the image of the sly, deceptive Jesuit stuck.
Some readers may have noticed posting at Decent Films has been a little light. I’ve been more than usually busy lately with various things that have kept me from posting here as often as I’d like … On the plus side, for the benefit of readers in Arizona, I’ll be in Phoenix this Friday, November 5, speaking at Xavier College Preparatory at 7:00 pm on behalf of the Emeth Society.
For almost a couple of years now, I’ve been crowing about the joys of “Shaun the Sheep,” Aardman Animation’s “Wallace & Gromit” spin-off series on British television—until now available on Region 1 DVD only in one-disc collections of six to eight episodes. Now at last all 40 episodes of the first season of “Shaun the Sheep” are available in a two-disc edition from Lionsgate and HIT Entertainment. If you’ve been holding out, now is the time to discover the joys of Shaun.
Just a quick note drawing your attention to a couple of modest enhancements in the site that hopefully make it more usable.
Are religious themes cropping up in more mainstream movies these days? Stephen Whitty, film critic for New Jersey’s largest newspaper, the Newark Star Ledger, thinks they may be. In a recent article Whitty connects the dots on a number of recent Hollywood offerings that touch on spiritual questions or themes of faith, from Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, starring Matt Damon, to the Ed Norton/Robert De Niro prison film Stone, from Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger to the Disney sports film Secretariat.
Here is a strange thing. Secretariat, a quietly faith-laced Disney movie from Christian director Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers) and Christian screenwriter Mike Rich (The Rookie), has bizarrely been catching politically tinged flak even more violent than last year’s inspirational sports film, The Blind Side. It also has an ironic if not improbable defender: Roger Ebert.
I’m not sure, but I think that Babies is the only movie this year that I’ve already seen three times.
Today on the first hour of “Catholic Answers Live” (6pm–7pm EDT): Waiting For Superman; Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole; The Town; Easy A; Devil and more. Listen live!
“Outrageous and grave,” “contrary to the respect due to all religions,” “contrary to the teaching of Jesus Christ,” “insensitive,” and “foolish and cowardly” were among the many words that world Christian leaders addressed to would-be Quran burners. Jacob Isom, a 23-year-old skateboarding enthusiast from Amarillo, Texas, had something even more succinct to say: “Dude, you have no Quran!”
I have nothing to add to my review of Paul Greengrass’s United 93, except to say that four years later there is still a gaping wound at Ground Zero where a memorial should be. For me, this film is the closest thing we have to an adequate tribute to those we lost on September 11, 2001.
Blasphemy is in the air, it seems.
Copyright © 2000– Steven D. Greydanus. All rights reserved.